Four chemists at the University of St Andrews have been recognised with the award of prestigious prizes for their research.

Dr Sharon Ashbrook, Professors James Naismith, Steve Nolan and Douglas Philp have all been honoured by external bodies recently.

The awards are as follows:

Dr Sharon Ashbrook – the 2009 BRSG-NMRDG Annual Prize for Excellent Contribution to Magnetic Resonance by an Early Career Researcher.

Professor James Naismith – the Jeremy Knowles Prize of the Royal Society of Chemistry for work in Chemical Biology.

Professor Steve Nolan – the Organometallic prize of the Royal Society of Chemistry for work in N-heterocyclic carbenes.

Professor Doug Philp – the Bader Prize of the Royal Society of Chemistry for work on self replicating systems.

The four all head research groups in the School of Chemistry at St Andrews, which alongside Edinburgh University forms EaStChem. Their research is funded by the BBSRC (Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council), The Wellcome Trust, the European Commission research project AEROPATH and the EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council).

Head of the School of Chemistry, Professor Derek Woollins, commented,

“Of course, in any one year the competition is intense and the outcome unpredictable, so my colleagues and their groups are to be congratulated. It should be noted that Chemistry at St Andrews has been extraordinarily successful in attracting such awards over the past few years and that four colleagues at Edinburgh, the other partner of EaStChem, also won awards this year.

“Coming on top of our outstanding RAE performance, it is nice to note that research work across the range of activity is consistently recognised as internationally leading.”